


How to Train Your Surly, Violent Dark One

by amycarey



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Angst, Comedy, Dark One Emma, F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-22
Updated: 2015-05-22
Packaged: 2018-03-31 17:02:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3985930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amycarey/pseuds/amycarey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>““This is your darkness level.” He’s drawn a graph, shading Emma’s ascent into the dark in red.  “It’s pretty high, but you’re not at ‘Rumpelstiltskin’ levels by a long shot.” </p>
<p>Henry tries to actively re-train Emma from her dark impulses. It doesn’t go very well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How to Train Your Surly, Violent Dark One

**Author's Note:**

> I attempted to write comedy Dark One Emma fic but I had a few feelings along the way. Deeply inspired by 'Lilo and Stitch'.

It’s a week before Emma re-appears. She turns up at the mansion, staggering as she appears from thin air on the front porch. Henry sees her from his bedroom window. He is crouched on the windowsill – a cramped fit but he likes being a neutral observer to the comings and goings of Mifflin Street – and he sees her hand rise once, twice, three times to the door, as though she wants to knock but can’t quite work up the courage.

 

He thunders down stairs, Mom hard on his heels, yelling, “Henry, do not run in socks on hardwood floors!” and pulls the front door open.

 

Emma stares. She looks terrible. Skin sallow. Eyes rimmed red. Hair lank around her shoulders. She smells too – sort of like Pongo when he’s been out in the rain too long, but also of dark magic – dusty, aromatic, harsh. “Ma!” His hands twitch at his sides in a desperate desire to hug her, but he holds back because she looks like she might run at any second.

 

She raises a hand in an awkward wave. “Hi, kid.”

 

And Mom appears behind him. “Emma,” she says and there is such unspeakable relief in her voice. “Come in. Tea?”

 

She just nods. He wonders for a moment at the acceptance; he’d have thought the Dark One’s tastes would run a little darker -- some of Mom’s single-malt whiskey, the fancy stuff she keeps on a high shelf, or at least coffee.

 

Still, it’s Ma. She’s alive and she doesn’t _look_ evil, not like Rumpelstiltskin with his scaly skin and lizard eyes.

 

(There’s a flash of gold in the green though. Just a sliver. It makes him shiver.)

 

Mom moves around the kitchen, setting the kettle to boil on the stovetop and fussing over mugs and tea flavours. “Peppermint?” she asks Henry, who nods, sitting on a stool beside Emma, just basking in her presence.

 

It had been a long week. He was in the diner when the whole horrific event played out, and then Mom entered, ashen and devastation lining her face, Robin close behind her. He stood. “Mom?” She pulled him close to her, hugging him and – oh God – she was crying. He hadn’t seen her cry like that since the time she’d had to let him go at the town line. “Mom? What’s happened?”

 

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered in his hair. “So sorry.” _Sorrysorrysorry_ reverberated through his skull.

 

It was Grandpa who told him in the end. “Emma sacrificed herself for everyone,” he said, voice hoarse.

 

Later, when he entered Mom’s room after a bad dream – darkness, falling, a cackle – he found Mom sitting up in bed, holding the dagger, the tip of the knife against her palm. “It wasn’t for everyone,” she said. “It was for me.”

 

“She’s not dead,” he said and he was fierce in this. “You need to stop talking about her like she’s dead. She’s around somewhere. She’ll come back for me.”

 

Mom smiled, shaky and with wet eyes. She twisted the dagger in her hand and he saw ‘Emma Swan’ gleaming across the blade. “I hope so, darling.”

 

I was right, he thinks. Emma’s here and she’s okay – alive at least, even if she’s not saying much. “I got an A in my history project,” he says.

 

Emma turns her head to him at that. “That’s great, kid,” she says, but it’s with a weary voice, spoken as though every syllable aches. Mom places a mug of tea in front of her and Emma cradles it in her hands. With it comes a plate of cookies and Emma stuffs three in her mouth, chewing ravenously. It’s like she hasn’t eaten in a week and Henry wonders where she’s been.

 

“I need help,” Emma says. “I just… I can’t. I keep wanting to hurt people.”

 

“You haven’t though,” Mom says and she reaches out a hand, tentatively, and strokes her thumb over the back of Emma’s hand.

 

Emma pulls away. “Are you happy?” she asks.

 

“I’ll be happy when I’ve saved you,” Mom says and she smiles. It’s meant to be encouraging but Henry thinks of the past week, whole days buried in books in her vault. He’d taken to meeting her there after school. Robin was never there; he and Roland were living at the bed and breakfast. He’s not sure Mom’s even seen him since it happened.

 

“No,” Emma says. “This was a mistake. You’re supposed to be happy. That was the deal.” There’s a puff of golden smoke and when it clears, Emma’s gone.

 

Still. “She’s alive,” Henry says and, while Mom’s eyes still squint with concern, she smiles.

 

*

 

Emma appears later that night, banging at their front door, frantic. “Stay upstairs,” Mom says, voice tense and sharp, and she slips the Dark One’s dagger into the pocket of her robe so Henry doesn’t protest, though he sits on the landing, watching the scene play out below him.

 

When Mom opens the door, Emma lurches through it and Mom catches her, steadying her. He can’t see much, but Emma’s knuckles are grazed and bloody and, before she buries her face in Mom’s hair, he sees that her lip is split. “I hurt him,” she says. “He was hurting her – she said ‘no’ – and I couldn’t stop punching.” She can’t stand on her own, legs buckling beneath her when she tries to push away.

 

Mom guides her in the direction of her study, darting a look upstairs. He goes upstairs but instead of returning to his own room, he waits for Mom in her room, crawling under her quilt, wrapping his mother’s scent around himself as he sits up. He must fall asleep before she comes up to bed, but he vaguely recalls a kiss pressed to his forehead and the covers shifting as Mom climbs into bed next to him.

 

When he wakes it’s to the smell of bacon and he pads downstairs. Mom’s busy in the kitchen and Emma’s sitting at the kitchen table, dressed in a pair of Mom’s silk pyjamas and shredding the newspaper into strips. “Pancakes, Henry?” Mom asks. He nods and slides into the seat beside Emma, pretending not to notice when she flinches.

 

“So,” Henry says into the silence taut with tension. “I reckon we should rehabilitate Ma.”

 

Emma barks out a laugh. “Not possible, kid.”

 

“Look,” he says. “I know Mom’s researching a cure but it may not be possible and I’m not losing one of my moms again so you’re just going to have to suck it up.”

 

Mom laughs, placing a plate of bacon and pancakes in front of Emma, and then Henry. “He gets that from you,” she says.

 

“Both of you,” Henry says because surely Mom is not so horribly dense as to think Henry’s stubbornness is purely a genetic trait. “I’m not giving up on you, Ma, even if you think you can’t be saved.”

 

“Lovely sentiment, _dearie_ ,” Emma spits, “but I’m evil and I’m only getting pulled into the darkness more and more every day.” She stands, pushing out her chair with a screech against the wooden floors that’ll probably leave a mark and if it was Henry he’d be so grounded right now.

 

“You know,” Mom says, “the darkness latches on to your deepest impulses. Rumpelstiltskin’s base impulse was misogyny and cowardice. So far as I can tell, yours seems to be your interminable fear of commitment and a violent desire to protect women.”

 

(Henry wonders sometimes about Emma, about her life pre-Storybrooke, pre-Hook.

 

This isn’t the first time he’s wondered just how gay she is because, like, she’s kind of ridiculously chivalrous in her own way and sometimes she looks at Mom like she hangs the moon.)

 

“Also,” Mom adds, “if you’ve scraped my floor, you’ll pay for repairs. Sit down.”

 

Emma slumps down in the chair and it’s almost amusing to see the dark one sulking like a child. She picks disconsolately at a piece of bacon. “Knife and fork,” Mom says.

 

Emma’s lip curls but she picks up her fork and stabs a pancake until she tears a bite-sized section free.

 

“Now,” Mom says, sitting down with her own plate and a mug of coffee. “You may stay here for as long as you need.”

 

“Won’t it be a bit crowded?” Emma asks. “You know, with Robin and Roland?”

 

“They live at the bed and breakfast,” Henry says and a whole range of emotions flicker across Emma’s face – anger, frustration and what he thinks might be hope. “I have a plan,” he says and pulls his notebook out of the pocket of his hoodie. “So,” he says. “This is your darkness level.” He’s drawn a graph, shading Emma’s ascent into the dark in red. Like, Emma’s hurt people. Last night wasn’t the first time. He’s heard the stories, the rumours whispered in the diner. She’s been playing a series of really irritating pranks on people who have annoyed her in the past. There has been an alarming upsurge in arson around town. But she hasn’t killed anyone. “So, it’s pretty high, but you’re not at ‘Rumpelstiltskin’ levels by a long shot.”

 

Emma frowns. “You’re such a nerd.” She grabs his notebook and pulls out the graph, setting it alight with casual ease.

 

Henry makes a mental note to find an empty spray bottle and fill it with water. Aversion therapy is supposed to be really effective with animals.

 

*

 

Mom summons a bunch of her books from the vault and they sit in the lounge together. Henry’s reading too – a psychology book on his kindle, all about retraining the human brain – but he’s watching Emma. She’s bored, knee jiggling, fingers tapping. It’s when she starts magicking up fireballs, tossing them around in her hands like juggling balls that he feels like he needs to step in.

 

“No fireballs in the house,” he says and spritzes her with water.

 

She growls and throws a fireball. It misses him by a long margin, and it was obviously never intended to hit him, but she sets a painting of a horse alight.

 

Mom rolls her eyes and douses the flames with a splash of water without even looking. She has stockinged feet coiled up beneath her as she reads. “Drama queen,” she says.

 

“Takes one to know one,” Emma responds. She’s explosive with untamed energy and her eyes flash gold when she looks at Mom, but her lips curl into an alarming grin and she runs her tongue along her teeth.

 

“I think we should try roleplaying,” Henry says. Grandma’s big into role plays; there’s at least one in every unit of work they do at school. “You be you, and I’ll be someone who’s annoying you.” He stands and saunters over to her. “Hi, Emma,” he says. “Your hair looks stupid.”

 

“So’s your face,” Emma says, sullen and staring at her knees.

 

“Okay,” Henry says. “Not great, but not that different from your normal responses. Imagine I’m, like, stealing your car. What do you do?”

 

“I punch you in the face.”

 

“No,” Henry says. “Think harder.”

 

“I punch you _really hard_ in the face.”

 

“This isn’t working,” Henry says, looking over at Mom who appears to be trying desperately not to laugh.

 

“I don’t think role play is the answer, darling,” she says. “Emma, why don’t you make yourself useful and help Henry organise lunch for us?”

 

Emma follows him to the kitchen, slouching and kicking at the skirting boards as she goes. She makes sandwiches, while Henry makes cocoa. But when Mom takes one bite of a sandwich she spits it out immediately. “Honestly, Emma? Cheese whiz and raspberry jam?” Henry places his sandwich back on the plate, uneaten.

 

Emma takes a defiant bite of one. “I like it.”

 

“Idiot,” Mom says. Henry worries for a moment at Emma’s response but her lips quirk into a grin and she chews with her mouth open, really savouring the disgusting flavour combination.

 

“I think we should go out for lunch,” Henry says. Mom shoots a glance at Emma who is tearing through the dreadful sandwiches. “It’ll be fine,” he says. “We’ll be with her.”

 

*

 

It’s not fine. It is so incredibly not fine.

 

He forgets that with the diner comes crowds of people and, more especially, crowds of people who haven’t seen Emma since she sacrificed herself for Mom. Including, apparently, Grandma and Grandpa.

 

There’s a shocked silence when they walk in, the whole diner swivelling, and then it’s broken by Grandma’s high pitched, “Emma!” She rushes forward, heedless of the baby strapped to her front, and pulls Emma into a tight hug. Henry watches Emma tense, hands balled into fists at her side.

 

This seems to be the cue for an entire lunch rush of diner customers to crowd forward, clawing and grabbing for Emma – or the saviour or whoever they seem to think she is. Emma’s vibrating, her skin glows golden. “You need to back off,” Mom says but no one listens.

 

“Seriously,” Henry yells above the din. “Back away.”

 

It’s too late though. Emma explodes in a wave of tension and fury, the ripples blasting everyone in her wake. A table bursts into flames. Glasses shatter. People are thrown backwards against walls, tables, chairs. Henry ends up cracking his head against the glass door of the diner, the sound loud and thudding.

 

“I’m sorry,” Emma cries, helpless in a maelstrom of magic, glittering gold and white and black. “I can’t…” And she disappears.

 

 

Mom helps Henry up. “Where’d she go?” he asks, touching the back of his head.

 

“I don’t know,” Mom says, mouth set in a grim line. “But we will find her.”

 

As it turns out, they don’t need to. There’s a trail of destruction that leads back home and when they enter, they find Emma, curled up at the bottom of the stairs, shuddering and shaking, sparks of magic bursting from her. “Go away!” she cries when they enter.

 

“Where?” Mom asks. “This is my home.” She sits at the foot of the stairs, not touching Emma, but her hand hovers close enough to Emma that she could reach out and grab it. “Henry, would you fetch the first aid kit, please?”

 

He runs to grab it from its place on a high shelf in the kitchen and when he returns, he hears Emma. “I hurt him,” she whispers. “I can’t be around him. I need to go.” He watches as she slips, trying to stand but without the energy to do so.

 

“You’re where you need to be,” Mom says. “With family. With people who love you.”

 

Emma snorts and butts her head against Mom’s leg. She looks like nothing so much as a cat in this moment – a feral, angry one, but a cat nonetheless. “No one loves me,” she says. “I tried – true love’s kiss – thought it would…”

 

“Hook?”

 

Emma nods. “Tried so hard,” she mumbles. “Too hard.” Mom reaches out, her hand hovering over Emma’s head for a moment, before she runs her fingers through her hair. Emma actually purrs.

 

He coughs. “I have the kit.” Mom takes it and makes Emma sit up. She sulks as Mom checks her for wounds and snarls when Mom uses antiseptic on the grazes on her palms.

 

“Any injuries, Henry?” she asks and he shakes his head.

 

“I’m fine,” he says. “Ma, I love you. I don’t want you to go anywhere.” He sits beside her, the three of them on the bottom step of the stairs and Ma leans her head against Henry’s shoulder.

 

*

 

Henry is of the opinion that he shouldn’t have to go to school – trauma and all that – but in this his mothers are united, so he sulks his way through social studies and language arts and math for the next three days. Emma doesn’t leave the house, contenting herself with attacking the garden and terrifying the neighbour’s cat and letting out magic in bursts of energy in the basement when it gets too much. She’s totally destroyed Henry’s rec room but he doesn’t care. He got all the good games out first.

 

On the first day, Emma gets into a screaming fight with Mom over breakfast where things get thrown (he narrowly misses wearing a bowl of Honey Puffs as a hat) and curses are cast across the breakfast table and ends with Emma screeching, “Just use the fucking dagger already!”

 

Mom sighs. “I’m not going to control you, Emma. You’re going to learn to control yourself.”

 

And all the tension leeches out of Emma’s body, though she doesn’t apologise or offer to clean up the mess.

 

On the second day, he has a private conversation with Emma about manners and the next thing he knows, Emma has transmogrified an expensive vase into a bouquet of roses. She hands them to Mom and kisses her hand, before looking back at Henry as if to say, “Satisfied?” This means she misses the faint flush that spreads across Mom’s cheeks at the gesture.

 

It’s ruined a moment later when Mom looks for a vase to place the roses in and discovers an empty spot on the bookshelf in her study.

 

It’s on the third day of relative peace that he arrives home to the sound of yelling. He enters to find Emma at Robin’s throat. “Make her happy!” she snarls. “Why aren’t you making her happy? Where the hell have you _been_?”

 

He’s choking, his skin mottling, and he tries to gasp out an answer. “Try – won’t let me – you.”

 

“Shut up!” Emma roars and her voice echoes, preternaturally loud in the confined space of the living room.

 

“Emma!” Mom says. “Put him down.”

 

Emma lets go of Robin’s throat and Henry sees it happen. She pulls her fist back and punches him, a sickening crunch as fist hits nose. He flies back, landing with a thud against the door frame, at Henry’s feet.

 

“What’s wrong with you?” Emma yells. “Why aren’t you happy?”

 

And now Mom’s angry, drawing herself up, eyes flashing. “How could I be happy,” she hisses, “when you’re like this, you _idiot_?”

 

“Fuck you,” Emma says and there’s that cloud of magic and Emma is gone. Mom stands for a moment, shaking, before remembering herself and rushing over to Robin, murmuring softly and healing him, running a hand through his hair.

 

Henry goes to put his school bag away and when he passes the guest bedroom – Emma’s bedroom – he hears sobbing and, after knocking tentatively, he opens the door. “You’re family,” he says. “Mom doesn’t give up on family.”

 

Emma shows no sign of having heard him. “She’s upstairs,” he tells Mom, who has settled Robin on the couch and is playing hostess.

 

“Could you get Robin a drink, dear?” she asks and moves out of the room, upstairs.

 

“She loves her, doesn’t she?” Robin asks with a rueful glance at Henry.

 

“Yeah,” Henry says. “I think she does.”

 

*

 

In all the fuss, they miss the town meeting and so Henry thinks nothing of it when there’s a knock at the door. He opens it to find Blue and his grandparents. Grandpa has a sword strapped to his belt. “Can I help you?”

 

Blue pushes past him. “Where is she?”

 

“I don’t think Mom would want you to be here,” Henry says hurrying after the fairy who walks quickly in the direction of the kitchen where Mom is supervising Emma making dinner. Blue ignores him. “Grandma?”

 

“I’m sorry, Henry,” Grandma says, her eyes large and sad. “It’s the only way.” He’s sickened because this is the way Grandma and Grandpa speak when they’re going to do something self-righteous and awful and _wrong_.

 

He feels sick. When he reaches the kitchen, Mom stands with an arm barring Blue’s way to Emma. “Stand aside, your majesty,” Blue says, voice spitting pious venom.

 

“No,” Mom says. Emma boils with barely contained energy, breathing deeply.

 

Blue sighs and steps forward, raising her wand at Mom. Mom stands her ground, hands raised defensively, and then she’s pushed out of the way, hitting the ground. Blue has a clear path to Emma and it is at this that Emma attacks, launching forward with a roar, arms outstretched and magic sizzling from her fingertips. Emma snaps the wand and then her hands find Blue’s chest and Emma's holding her heart in her hand and squeezing and dust trails to the ground and he wants to throw up. “Now David!” Grandma screams and Grandpa bounds forward and pricks Emma with a needle.

 

She lashes out, a fireball hitting David, setting his sleeve on fire, and another one catching on the curtains, but Henry cannot focus on that, not when Emma sways and holds up a hand to her head. “You – how could you?” she asks, eyes wide with betrayal and body trembling, before she falls to the ground.

 

She’s breathing. It’s the first thing Henry checks for, even as he’s paralysed with fear. Her chest rises and falls, slow but definite. “What did you do?” he whispers.

 

Mom scrambles over, utterly undignified in her haste, and checks Emma’s pulse. Tendrils of magic coil around her body and she lifts her as though she weighs only as much as baby, cradling her to her chest in the same way. “Regina,” Grandma says, voice high and broken.

 

“No,” Mom says fiercely. “You don’t get to speak. This – what you did – that’s not something you do to family. We don’t give up on family when it gets tough.”

 

“We were doing what was right,” David says.

 

“You didn’t _ask_ ,” Regina says. “And now your precious Blue Fairy is dead and your daughter is cursed to a dreamless sleep for all eternity. That’s on you.” She steps over Blue’s body, twisted at a grotesque angle.

 

“Henry…” David says.

 

“I think you should go,” Henry says and, not waiting to see if they do as he asks, follows after his mothers.

 

He stands in the doorway of Mom’s study. Mom settles Emma on the couch like she’s precious and delicate and breakable, sitting beside her and smoothing her hair back from her forehead. “My beautiful idiot,” she murmurs and leans forward, kissing Emma’s cheek.

 

Henry holds his breath but nothing happens and he finds he’s strangely disappointed. Mom pulls back, hand curled around Emma’s forearm and draws the dagger. “Dark One, I command you to wake up,” she says and her breathing is ragged. “Wake up, damn it!”

 

He steps forward. “Maybe I could…” he suggests.

 

Mom doesn’t move, hands clenched around the blade so hard he thinks he spots blood, so he kneels before Emma and kisses her forehead. He directs every thought he has towards Emma, willing with all his might for her to wake up. _I’ll never wish for anything again. Please. Pleasepleaseplease._ For a moment, nothing happens but then she gasps, jerking forward, narrowly missing a collision with Henry’s forehead. Golden magic crackles, but Mom grabs her wrists. “It’s all right, Emma. I’ve got you. You’re safe.”

 

She looks around wildly. “It’s still in me,” she says, her voice small and shuddering. “Get it out, Regina. I don’t want it. Make it stop.”

 

Mom draws her into her arms, stroking her back and cooing. “It’s okay, Emma,” she murmurs. “I’ve got you.”

 

“Did I kill her?” Emma asks.

 

“No,” Henry says, just as Mom says, “yes.”

 

Emma’s face crumples.

 

“Emma,” Mom says. “Look at me.” She places a hand beneath Emma’s chin, forcing her to meet Mom’s gaze. “You can control this. You have controlled this.” She’s silent for a long moment, and Henry feels like he’s stumbled into an intensely private moment. “You were defending me,” she says.

 

“Still murder,” Emma mumbles.

 

“Yes,” Mom agrees. “That you can feel the horror of it, though… The darkness hasn’t taken over. And it won’t. I won’t let it.”

 

It’s then that Emma looks over at Henry. “Thanks, kid,” she says, with a tilt of her head that says _I love you_ and _you are my everything_ even as she cries and Henry scrunches up his face to say the same back.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to the good people of Twitter for enabling.


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